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So of course my trip had its ups and downs... It was utterly fantastic seeing Erica and Maya and Lauren and my little sister. Being there made me realize that I never really re-created that level of community here, which I guess is neither here nor there, but it certainly made me nostalgic. I love my friends here dearly, but due to people having things like work and kids, and perhaps also due to the sheer size of Chicago (as opposed to Tucson, where we could basically all bike to each other's houses in short periods of time all year long), I have never really found people that I see every day. I can see it when I watch my Tucson friends talking; there's some level of intimacy and connection that is much more difficult to achieve when you only see people once a week/month/whatever. (I felt this enough to trigger a crying jag, helped along by extreme tiredness and some outside stresses, on Erica's couch. Whoops.)
But anyway, the audition went well, and then it didn't. I made it through the first round (which would have been more impressive if there had been more than nine people there, but still), but then they only gave me about 10 minutes to prepare for the second round. So of course I got flustered and rushed-feeling and panicked, which led to me playing poorly in the second round. So again, ah well.
Around these things there were old episodes of Northern Exposure, an unusual amount of clothes shopping, a ten-mile hike up Wasson Peak, and some pretty good food. A happy trip. I don't know how many more times I'll really be there, and so there was kind of an air of finality. My sister will be there for a few years yet, but many of my friends are moving/have moved, and I'm so rarely in Arizona anyway... Yeah.